When you go on vacation, all you want is to take your mind off things. The work, the problems, the what ifs, and what nows. Hotels and resorts feel like a safe place, and how could they not be?
But the staff members of holiday facilities see everything that happens here under a magnifying glass. The people that come in and out, the drama that happens, the secrets that are supposed to stay there, the good and the ugly.
So today we looked at various Reddit threads to find out exactly what crazy, weird, and insane things sometimes happen behind closed hotel doors that visitors have little clue about.
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My mom was a hotel general manager and I basically grew up in hotels.
The worst was a man who hung himself in the hotel room. On Christmas Eve. He'd driven through the night to see his kids for Christmas, and his ex wouldn't let him see them. So he went back to his hotel room and hung himself.
My mom is still traumatized over finding his body. After that, she organized a party in the hotel lobby for every Christmas eve and always invited all the guests, to try to get people out of their rooms and lift their spirits if they were spending Christmas in the hotel.
I worked front desk and when anyone calls 911 from any room it notifies me. I called the room and a young boy picked up and was sobbing. He told me his dad hit him and he was scared. I told him to come down to the front desk and I would hide him until the police got there. His nose was bledding and face swollen, he had to be about twelve and I hid him in the GM' s office. The father came down looking for him and and I lied and said I had not seen any kids. The police handled it after that.
Another time a woman came in using her credit card buwould not check in until I promised I would not tell her husband she was there. She said he would hurt her if he found her. He must have found the hotel on his bank statement and called over and over again asking for a woman by her name and I just said we had no one by that name. Hotels can be intense places to work...
I was on a cruise to the Bahamas when I came across an unlocked piano.
Sat down and made +$100 in tips before being chased away by an angry pianist.
100+ TIPS?!!!!!! The pianist should tell you to be their partner!
I used to work part-time at a ski resort. One of the co-workers, Jack, used to spread a rumor of the headless skier. It was a hit spot for tourists, so there was always new people coming in and out, and he would always drop a subtle comment about him. Most people would have a laugh at it, sometimes it would freak the kids out, but most people just took it as a joke. This went on for a while, but Jack wanted to up his game. He was a decent skier himself, so he started wearing an oversized turtleneck sweater to cover up his head, and would ski around outside the resort at night (quick warning, don't try this, he crashed more than once), anyway, it was a hoot. One night he was doing his usual routine, skiing around as the headless skier, but he hit a slope a bit too hard and lost control. There was nothing we could do, he was going too fast. At the bottom of the slope was a small building which was currently in renovation, so there was a heap of construction equipment laying around. Jack came to a stop as the pipe collided with his head, decapitating him instantly. (Kidding), He came slowly and safely to a stop, but now we have the origin of how the headless skier lost his head
I worked at a seven story hotel in Illinois and one night a man tried to climb out a 7th story window to the roof, a real daredevil. He fell to his death and the scene that followed was one of the most WTF moments of my life, and really changed my perception of people in general. It turned out that while climbing out the window his girlfriend tickled him, causing him to fall. Later, when outside, she screamed that over and over, "I didn't mean to make him fall, I was only tickling him." I thought she would die just crying. In their panic, the 4 remaining people in the room took the elevator to the basement, instead of the ground floor and proceeded to punch holes in the wall because they were so stoned and wasted they couldn't find their way out. One got out but the rest were down there for over an hour. When the woman finally got outside, where I headed after calling the police, she literally clawed at me and begged me to do CPR in spite of a gusher of blood coming out of his mouth, he was obviously done. It was a confusing and chaotic night after that, I was the manager on duty and so I was the one who let the police into the room. I watched the police chaplain gather up all the drugs and paraphernalia into a shopping bag, and he did a thorough search, too. There was tons of it, more drugs than I have ever seen before or since. It took hours to clean everything up and the last thing to happen was the fire department hosing the blood away.
What was so WTF that changed my view on people? The official police report stated that drugs were suspected to play a role but none were found in the room. It was just stated that man fancied himself a daredevil and others in the room didn't notice he was gone for several minutes. All total lies. I'll never believe another police report as long as I live. I'll never believe another news story, even a small one. What happened and what was reported were so different I wondered if something had happened at another hotel the same night.
So, not a fun, funny story, but one of the most WTF nights of my life.
Edited to add: No, I was never interviewed by the police other than giving them the information given at check in, and no, was never interviewed by a reporter. I even called the paper a few days later and asked if they were interested in what really happened, they were sort of "meh" and never got back to me. What a disconnect from reality. This was just a small incident in a huge city, now when I see major stories on major news sites I can't help to think the misinformation must increase exponentially.
I worked with a woman who was the head of housekeeping for a large hotel in the area who told me this story..
There was this woman and her daughter who were local but checked in the hotel for a few days. One of the housekeepers comes to service the room one morning while the mom is outside by the pool. The housekeeper walks in and finds the girl in bed with blood everywhere.
Turns out the girl came to town to have an abortion and mom needed to hide it from dad. The girl started hemorrhaging in her sleep(while mom was already outside the room) and the housekeeper actually found her in time to save her life.
The housekeeper was too distraught after all was said and done to clean the room(I can't remember if she quit).. another housekeeper was brought in to finish.
This is why we need safe abortions. At least this one sounds shady, I don't have a lot of details to go on by
My uncle works at a very upscale restaurant on a very well-to-do and desirable vacation island in the Atlantic Ocean. One of their regular customers is a billionaire oil guy. My uncle has told me that this guy always arrives on a yacht that tows a smaller yacht, and the smaller yacht is still big enough to have a helicopter. He also demands to have his dogs seated at the table with him, where he feeds them foie gras and expensive water. One time, the resort owner got a call from health inspectors saying they'd received a complaint that dogs were seen eating in the restaurant. All the owner did was say the billionaire's name and the health inspector just responded, 'Oh okay, bye.'
I worked in a hotel briefly and while i didn't see it (thankfully) i heard about this the next day:
Owner was a d**k. Hotel was in an amazing location, and built to great standards, but he let the entire building languish for decades.
It's like if someone took a hundred year old, 4 star hotel and turned it into a highway rest stop.
This f*****g guy was all about the money. Cheap as s**t.
single ply TP, discount pool chemicals, cheap as s**t soap, all sorts of hidden fees and overpriced room service.
one day, a teenage girl is working the counter. it's her first week, and she's just ecstatic to be at the desk.
dude comes in and rents the penthouse suite for the night.
He's alone, but he seems nice and his card clears, so whatever.
Later into the evening she's getting ready to leave when *SMACK*
The dude jumped from the penthouse balcony and landed ten yards from her desk in the parking lot.
Obviously, she's beside herself, having just witnessed a man leap to his death and hit the ground like a sack of tomatoes.
As the housekeepers try to console her, The owner walks in a huff.
He looks at the shellshocked teenager and the corpse in the parking lot and his first words are:
**Well, Did he pay upfront?**
Top three:
1. Painted landscapes across three of the four walls. In s**t. Surprisingly talented.
2. Used condoms placed over every light bulb in the room. Discovered when the condoms started to burn.
3. Had an employee give out the wrong keys to a room. Parents gave the keys to small children. They ran ahead and opened the door. Inside was a couple performing bdsm, complete with ball gag and crop.
I worked front desk at a hotel and one guy brought in a mini-propane grill and started grilling chicken in his room.
We found out when the whole hall started to smell delicious. Unfortunately we had to make him stop.
The housekeeping staff at the hotel I used to work at would put all the dildo's they found in a box. It was a tradition to wrap the box and give it to the boss (female) at the Christmas party.
Not a big thing but something I will always remember.
I worked as a housekeeper in a four star hotel. It was quite an expensive place and we often had rich guests from the Middle East (this is relevant). The hotel, of course, had a spa area, and it was my duty to close this area around 10PM, meaning to shoo the last guests out of the pool and sauna, clean everything and close it.
One time I went to see if there were any guests still in the sauna, and when I opened the door there was a woman and man (I assume they were husband and wife) sitting inside - he was naked, only with a towel around his waist, and she was *fully veiled*, wearing a head-to-toe chador, inside a 90°C sauna.
Needless to say I was surprised. I don't care about religious clothing rules, to each his own I guess, but sitting *inside a sauna* fully veiled surely made me raise my eyebrows a little.
I'm feeling so sorry for this woman. Letting her sit in a 90°C sauna in head to toe covering could be very dangerous for her
Nothing too outlandish, but when I was in highschool I worked for a Super 8 in a small town in Wisconsin. People came from all over during hunting season and the S8 was pretty much the only place around.
I entered a room and was assaulted by a terrible rooting meat smell. I checked all the trash, nothing. As I started taking down the bed, I made the mistake of flapping the knot of blankets and sheets to try to separate them. A turkey carcass flew up out of the mangled bedding and smashed into my face. As putrid, stinking, slimy, turkey juices dripped down my face I threw up all over the bed and ran into the shower and turned it on to rinse.
I quit that day.
Since there aren't many replies, I have a few I guess. I'm front desk in a hotel. My favorite was when I wasn't working (I actually just got off my shift) when a large wedding party came back late at night absolutely trashed and eventually they all went to their rooms. A while later, the current desk person gets a call to the 4th floor immediately.
Turns out, one woman's boyfriend locked her drunk a*s out of the room...completely naked. Not one to complain, she decided to sleep it off on the couches we put in the elevator areas on each floor. Still naked. My coworker went and put a blanket on her and she woke up and said she was going to sue. She peed on the couch and threw up on it, but eventually got back into her room. The next morning she was so embarrassed she ran past the front desk to leave.
I wasn't the housekeeper but I was the Front Desk Manager at a nearby hotel...
Walked into work one January morning at 6:50am, like usual. The gentleman who was our night auditor told me that he was happy to see me because he was about to call the police. I asked why and that is when the most unusual, strange, and frightening experience I've ever had while working the several years in the hotel business unraveled.
In the dining room there was a very large man passed out in his bowl of oatmeal. Quite literally his face in his bowl... I rushed over to him and I immediately recognized this man as one of two men that frequent the hotel every month on "business". I try waking him up, no use. Checked his pulse and all seemed to be fine but I was completely unable to get him to wake up so I yelled for the gentleman behind the desk to call 911.
Two minutes later two officers arrived at the hotel and I showed them to the man who looked rather lifeless in his bowl of oatmeal. The cops both attempted to wake him to which they were able. Keep in mind this man was about 6'4 and quite large...he jumps up and starts screaming "Oh s**t! Oh S**t! I just f*****g fell asleep. What the f**k is this all over me?!" The cops replied that he passed out in his breakfast and asked him if he'd had any drugs or alcohol in his system to which he replied "Alright, you caught me. I might have done some blow last night. Okay, maybe more than some." The cops came back and asked me if I would direct them back to his room so they could check on the man who was staying there as well.
Two minutes after I gave them a room key they called to the front desk and requested that I come up. I knew something was weird but I did not expect what I walked into:
* Every piece of furniture was broken.
* They used the lamps to cook their drugs... I was young, naive, and clueless and knew nothing about that until the cop told me.
* They took massive shits in the bathtub... then smeared the s**t all over the walls.
* They had a gerbil running around the room.
* They had several sex toys laying around the room.
The second guy was nowhere to be found.
I pulled up the security footage that showed that he'd left the building at a quarter past 3am... and they ended up arresting the other.
Two housekeepers quit that morning after refusing to touch the room.
The second guy came back around 1 in the afternoon and I had the misfortune of having to call the police, ban him from the property, and listen to his threats of "shoving a f*****g rocket" up **my** a*s.
Never experienced anything quite like that again...
A lot of regular stuff like destroyed toilets, drunken shenanigans (kebab locked in a hotel safe for a couple weeks.), and people passed out in hallways but the stories I tell most often are:
Vast quantity of clear liquid dripping from the ceiling of a 5* hotel bedroom ceiling. Oh s**t! A leak! Call the maintenance guy! Nah, it was lube.
Couple in a double room requested clean towels/bedding, knock loudly, announce "housekeeping", a guy's voice shouts "sure, come in!" and when I open the door he's standing right in front of the door with his girlfriend blowing him. I apologize and start backing away. She keeps right on going. I was kind of envious of her concentration skills.
In a hostel made up of mostly dorm rooms with those false ceiling tiles that can be lifted up we got complaints of noises in the roof throughout the day, each time I went to investigate there was nothing in the room and no noise while I was there. This happened several times until I went into one room and found a wonky ceiling tile. So I climbed onto a top bunk and lifted the tile up. Just inside I found an empty half of vodka. I looked around and about three feet away is a stinking drunk, stinking backpacker staring at me. He'd been scampering around in the roof like a giant rat for the whole day. I shouted at him to get down and ended up grabbing him by the ankle until he gave in and slithered down onto the bed.
People do crazy s**t in hotels man. Some of the lost property is pretty good too: dildos, vibrators, a lamp, a cardboard cutout of a male stripper, a surfboard, two scuba tanks.
Were they swimming in lube or how tf do you get it to leak???
Hope i'm not to late to the party. My family owns and operates a 3 star motel in a decently big city in New England. I've spent 14 of my 25 years living here, so many weird/odd/wtf things have been witnessed by my brother and I. When I was about 15 we had hired a full time maintenance guy that lived on property and was on call 24/7. Spring and summers are very busy times due to conventions and the like so he as a welcome addition to the staff/family (most of our staff has been with us for 10+ years, and we treat them like it too).
The maintenance guy, we'll call him Mike, was a hard working, no nonsense straight to the point yes man. As a kid i never really paid attention to the numerous "odd" tattoos on his body, or the gold teeth, or his love of chains. To me he was the guy who was awesome since he always helped me practice my bball skills. One day out of the blue he says he needs a few days off to go handle some "personal business". A few days after he leaves we got a call from a detective asking if Mike is on the property, to which my dad replies he went out for a bit. Within ten minutes of the call we have a swat team busting into his room and raiding the place.
Turns out Mike was a former gang banger who had numerous arrest warrants out on him. He had run away with his girlfriend who was a twenty something at the time, and her parents had known o their relationship. So when the girl didn't come home one night the called the cops. The swat team found automatic assault rifles, a sawed off shotgun, and numerous handguns under his bed, along with a huge wad of cash.
**TL;DR** childhood spent living at a motel, basketball mentor was a former gang banger with maad guns under his bed. Could have killed us all.
**Edit:** Mike was a very nice guy, i like to believe we were his new start. Kind of like Freddy from House of Cards. I have no idea where he is right now, but I hope he is safe and well and not rotting in a jail cell.
Former hotel manager here. Check under your mattress if you stay in a hotel because odds are the housekeepers aren't bothering to lift up the mattress like they should. After you've lifted said mattress go ahead and enjoy the copious amounts of porn that are left there for you.
Seriously, people leave adult magazines and DVDs under those mattresses all the time. Quite often it's a regular guest who requests the same room and it's just their stash because they know the small Nepalese housekeeper won't lift the mattress even a little bit.
EDIT: Apparently some of you are taking the "enjoy copious amounts of free porn" as a literal statement. It was meant to be sarcastic as (at least for myself anyway) handling some strangers random porn for my own personal pleasure just seems unappealing.
Onetime I picked up sweatpants, thinking it was a hoodie, to bring down to lost and found. When I picked it up, blood covered panties fell out. You couldn't even see the original color of those things, it was all blood. I don't understand why people choose to be disgusting instead of THROWING IT AWAY.
Also, I saw the lady leaving the room to check out. It was a grown a*s woman. Lazy, gross...I don't know.
It’s the ever-inexplicable iT’S TheIR JoB tO PiCK uP My MesS mentality. But even then, a pile of books on the floor of a bookstore is one thing, items soaked in bodily fluids are quite another.
I worked for a hotel on a small tourist island off the coast of Long Beach, Ca. Every Monday the ferry would unload around 30 Mexican men. They would all wait in the hotel lobby for a bit and then seemingly disappear. I later discovered there was a door to a room that was not included on the hotel fire escape maps they put on the door in every room. Sure enough one day I caught a glimpse behind the mysterious door and saw a room crammed full of bunk beds and illegal immigrants.
At luxury ski resorts, the best thing to do is to hike up underneath a chairlift. It's usually just poles, gloves, and such, but these days, with all the advances in technology, you can find some sweet gear
That's stealing. My family owns a ski area, and if any employee was caught doing this, they'd be fired.
This is a story I will never forget and happy to share.
This woman at the hotal bar started drinking to much and she was also with her boss and colleagues. She was probably about 30 and really pretty but she started to get angry and started cussing because we cut her off. She wouldn't stand for this blasphemy and instead of just going up stairs by herself to her room and just tearing apart the mini fridge like Denzel from "Flight" she decided to take the high road.
Long story short, she punched her boss in the face and then took off around the hotel. Now, the hotel is oval shaped so she was basically doing laps. Every time she ran past the bar she would run screaming and giving the middle finger to all her colleagues. Some staff started chasing her and we called the cops. On one of her last laps, she ran up squatted down in her skirt and started taking the biggest s**t. I mean she literally squatted looked up and had the same face of the girl from the Exorcist and just shat all over the floor. This vile pile of disgusting fury rushed out of her a*s and the whole time she was just screaming at the top of her lungs and also was kind of barking like a dog. She was doing this in front of everyone at the bar including everyone she works with. Then she just stood up and started running again as s**t was still streaming down her leg.
At this point, none of her colleagues were saying anything and they were just staring in awe. As I was behind the bar laughing historically, I remember her boss just so calmly saying "Well, that b***h is fired". The laughing continued from the staff side. All the colleagues were as quiet as a funeral. The stench by the way was repulsive. She was arrested, obviously. Ooo yeah, and the boss left the entire staff a great tip.
Did maintenance for a hotel for a few months. The owner and his wife both were involved in the business. I walked into a room where the curtain rod was torn down. In there was the owner and our 18 year old front desk worker. He gave me $2000 cash to not tell his wife.
Not enough money to keep me quiet about that. She's barely legal and he's in a position of power.
One of my coworkers was vacationing in Mexico and decided buying weed was a good idea....and leaving said weed in a backpack in his hotel room. When they returned to their room, cops were rushing in and out of the room. They began to panic because they were sure they got busted for pot and were headed to a Mexican jail. The cops asked if this was their room and rushed them in. They told the guys to pack-up and that they were getting a new room. The room was a dark, so my friend opened the blinds. Someone had jumped from their balcony and landed on theirs...thus exploding all over the glass door.
Edit: changed "busted with cop" to "busted with pot"
So the police knew someone had “exploded” all over someone’s holiday balcony, rushed them into their (dark) room to pack their stuff without explaining about the dead guy, and didn’t say something like “hey, you might want to use the lights and not open the blinds”? Now I’m just picturing them watching gleefully and morbidly taking bets on how the tourists will react.
Not a housekeeper, but a supervisor at a hotel. Two weeks ago I get a call in the middle of the night from one of the bellmen telling me he needs help. I throw on some clothes and run over (I live across the street) to find a drunk guy passed out in one of the lobby bathroom stalls amongst the single most foul odor I have ever smelled. Couldn't remember his room or who he was with.. Turns out he had decided to take a s**t in the hallway and then fell in it, smearing it all over himself and the floor. Ended with me having to call the police and him calling me mean. That was actually the second time a drunk guy pooped in our hallway.
Also, a housekeeper once found a prostitutes "menu" of the services she performed. As well as a bag full of dildos.
I used to work in a park with facilities for the campers that had to be cleaned every morning. One morning, the janitor, we'll call him Jose, comes in to work and starts by cleaning the bathrooms. When he comes to the men's bathroom, a ranger sees him go in, come back out, put on a hazmat suit, and go back in. This actually wasn't as abnormal as you'd think, considering we'd get a lot of weirdos doing poop art on the walls. Anyways, Jose finishes up, and heads over to the next set of campsites. Later that day, some campers find a body in the woods right behind the bathroom. Sure enough, dude had been stabbed to death in the bathroom. Police were not happy with Jose.
Wait, wait... What? So "Jose" moved a dead body from the bathroom, cleaned up the crime scene, and didn't report it?
Used to work part time for a cleaning company. We used to find all sorts of s**t. We used to find positive pregnancy tests all the time but didn't want to congratulate them. Sometimes we knew before the husbands even knew. Things like bongs and other drug paraphernalia in teenagers rooms. My favorite story to tell is when this sweet old lady asked us to clean because her son was visiting. She was telling us how her son brought home his friend (male) from college. When cleaning the room he was staying in we found a tube of astroglide. I don't think she knew her son was gay and I sure as he'll didn't have the heart to tell her.
It is possible that it was a little confusing for her, so just said what was safe.
Not a housekeeper, but... we went to a Lions game and had the cheap-a*s of the group plan everything, including the hotel. At $80 a room in downtown Detroit, we walk into the lobby to a 5'3" black guy that has a leash and spiked chain around this probably 5'10" white girl with piggy tails, who's probably 300+ pounds.
I'm not a worker for a hotel or what have you, but my room mate used to work as one and told me stories where they cleaned up a room once and found someone had s**t into empty bottles and placed them behind radiators.
My friend, many years ago, owned a B&B. Rooms had bed, bathroom and wardrobes, set of drawers and Tv. She had a young guy (20s), stay 1 night. After he left she noticed the furniture had been moved, 6th sense told her to check everywhere. The guy had taken a dump, wrapped it in cling film and then sellotaped it to the underside of the bottom of both the set of drawers and wardrobe!!
hotel maintenance. a dead guy.
i had to smash up and scrap out his furniture, and put his bed back in storage.
Note: this post originally had 48 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
Used to work as a janitor at a hotel/casino. I cleaned the downstairs as opposed to the housekeeping who did rooms. Anyway, one night a guest's TV wasn't working. I know nothing about the electronics so my coworker went and tinkered with it. He couldn't get it working either. No prob says the guest we'll deal with it. Well, several hours later he calls the front desk again. This time the desk lady goes to check. She took one of the casino floor managers with her fortunately. The guest by this time was drunk and belligerent and just went up and went at the desk clerk. The floor manager caught the guest and body slammed the dude. Needless to say the guest was arrested and banned from the hotel.
Worked in hotels from the time I was 17 till 45. My husband and I worked for a very nice hotel chain. A wife had been calling her husband with no answer. My husband was the hotel assistant manager and went to check. Found him dead under the sink - heart attack two days before. One time a guest jumped from the 15th floor in the atrium and landed splat next to the grand piano. They tented and draped off of the area and got everything spotless. Except for a tooth ... I found a tooth on the carpeting a few days later.
Used to work as a janitor at a hotel/casino. I cleaned the downstairs as opposed to the housekeeping who did rooms. Anyway, one night a guest's TV wasn't working. I know nothing about the electronics so my coworker went and tinkered with it. He couldn't get it working either. No prob says the guest we'll deal with it. Well, several hours later he calls the front desk again. This time the desk lady goes to check. She took one of the casino floor managers with her fortunately. The guest by this time was drunk and belligerent and just went up and went at the desk clerk. The floor manager caught the guest and body slammed the dude. Needless to say the guest was arrested and banned from the hotel.
Worked in hotels from the time I was 17 till 45. My husband and I worked for a very nice hotel chain. A wife had been calling her husband with no answer. My husband was the hotel assistant manager and went to check. Found him dead under the sink - heart attack two days before. One time a guest jumped from the 15th floor in the atrium and landed splat next to the grand piano. They tented and draped off of the area and got everything spotless. Except for a tooth ... I found a tooth on the carpeting a few days later.
